You can see that consoles not always considered the fastest managed leaps of over 10 times the memory in generations lasting a shorter time than the present one.

Wii u is anomalous because although out 7 years after the present generation began, it does share similar performance and just takes advantage of the fact RAM prices are constantly dropping.

Next generation? Really 8GB is pretty realistic I would say and follows the trend perfectly well so is a believable number for a dev to say.

It would be quite a lot if it were all say GDDR5, but by the time the consoles come out (lets assume 12 months) it won't be a big deal. Even some budget class PC video cards are getting 2GB dumped on their boards now e.g 7770 and GTX650. Expect everything new high end next year in the spring to have 4GB+ just for video obviously.

in spite of that fact they still ended up severely behind in the memory department by end of gen so much so whole games are designed around the limitation.

so i dont really think 8gb is "right where you need it" if past is anything to run on you would be better off with 16 for "future proof"

ram is pretty much the most critical part of a computer/ any microprocessor machine. it determines the jobsize and the more you have it doesnt matter if the cpu is a little slower because you have plenty of space to tinker with instead of using all your cycles for decompression of textures and model data.

gta 7 would more greatly benefit from 16 gb of ram than a superfast processor.

just the same as the ps3 is not capable of processing all 50gb of data at once on its bluray but that 50gb of space makes longer games and more variety in gameworlds possible that if the ps3 didnt have bluray and only had a proc/gpu that was 2x as fast it wouldnt be able to do what it does today with these gigantic gameworlds without abundant repettition of rooms/environments in short amounts of time.

the amount of ram...should be balanced with what you intend to do. We compare consoles to PC's when that really isnt the right comparison. PC's have more overhead so the notion of having 4+gb of RAM makes sense. you have the OS and background apps to deal with on top of other things like web browsing and office apps and games. That is why a PC has so much more power than a console. It litterally has to be able to do more.

A console...its main function is simply to play games. They added features that are typical of PC's as a convenience. Even modern TV's can run web browsers and netflix and the such so it isnt like consoles are under extreme conditions to warrant such amounts of memory.

the idea of the more memory the better is partially true. Because when you look at it from a PC perspective, applications and games arent generally run from the media (hdd/cd/dvd...) they are copied into RAM and run from there. Consoles use that as well but they also rely on the media more than the RAM because that is where everything is stored and streamed from.

The wii-u and its 4gb is a split design much like the PS3. No doubt the next xbox will have a unified design like the 360 because its more efficient and offer flexibility in being able to allocate the memory depending on the duty. Perhaps the next PS will follow the same trend?

If there is to be 8gb total, i would imagine the ideal split (if they split it) would be 2gb max for GPU and 6gb for everything else. Unless these new systems use the GPGPU design and then a split isnt as efficient. A dynamic allocation makes more sense.

in some cases, background processing might not require as many resources so the remainder of the memory can be used for graphics processing and final rendering.

Bottom line is we know the next systems will NOT have any less than 4gb but anything over 8gb would be a waste. Unless they are designing these systems to replace a PC for business apps and video editing.

Yes but you have to remember that PC's at that time had already been capable of 4Gb of Ram for quite a while, and some games were already using that much, especially once you got into heavy modding. and it was no more than 6 months after the PS3's release that high end motherboards started to support 8Gb.

No game right now currently uses more than 6Gb of Ram without heavy modding.

Also moore's law has been degrading significantly over the last 5-6 years, we are getting close to the theoretical limits of silicon based computing. The improvement in hardware over the next 10 years is highly unlikely to be anywhere near the improvements over the last 10 years.

If Sony and MS were to release their new console with 8Gb it would be likely to last fairly well.

Jesus, I keep saying this over and over again in these kind of articles. No, the RAM isn't cheap. This isn't your usual RAM you buy on Newegg. This RAM needs to be very fast and have a much greater bandwidth if you want it to work in a console as it should...

I vetting sick of Cevat Yerli, he needs to STFU already & make sure Crysis 3 isn't riddled with 100's of glitches upon release like Crysis 2. You need to be alking about how you are taking steps in QA to make sure that don't happen again...

This guy runs his mouth every day talking about everything except how he's gonna not let Crytek drop the ball again on QA... /end rant

I think they should just spend more money and put 16gb ram in the consoles. It will save them in the long run. Even 32gb would be ok hell they're buying this stuff in massive bulk and it will be pretty cheap for them and it would help the developers over time greatly.

do we really need that much Ram? on a pc its different because pc's are used in so many different way or am i missing the point?

i think its a pretty safe bet that both ps4,xbox720 will have at the very very least 4GB ram and i can see both ms and sony going as much as 6-8. Ram is cheap so i rather just have 8GB for future uses or when developers in future may need more rap to do their thing.

i want to ask a question? how many people on N4g are planning to buying a next gen system at launch? which are you buying and why? are are you buying both ps4,xbox720? what about the system from Valve?

I myself want a ps4 just because i been a playstation fan since day one, also with family,job,kids i really don't have time for even one console so buying more than one is pretty useless for me.

I may buy ps4 at launch but i may wait since both ps3,xbox360 will get developer support for foreseeable future. and i don't want to buy a system have 10 games in 1st year and than wait another year before games start rolling in. i see both ps3 and xbox360 get most if not all the games that come out within next 2-3 years just because the Install bases for both platforms are high.

TBH doesnt matter how much ram sony or ms puts in their next consoles, itll most likely be generic slow ram to cut costs. unless they put g skill high performance memory wont make that much of a difference. But i would like to see a sony console with a fluid 60 fps in game xmb. i bought 8gbs of generic ram for my laptop and i didnt notice the extra 4 gigs at all just goes to show when it comes to pc upgrades the brand and quality counts for more than quantity.

The highest end pcs currently dont benefit from more that 4GB. Imo 8GB is pretty dang future proof and it would be other components bottlenecking the system beyond 4GB like graphics and hard drive mainly.

Sure i can see any of the consoles manufacturers twist their wallet for the whims of a studio with no major console hit yet on their hands (crysis sold a few millions but nothing like Crysis and what they probably hoped) .

Not sure how you came to the made up conclusion that Epic has the magical power to force MS hand to double ram. Now its been written they highly recommended it, but sorry they cant force another company to do thier every bidding.

I disagree. Crytek are known for pushing the limits and whilst historically, they don't have the legacy Epic have, being relatively new to the industry, from the outset, they showed the industry exactly what they were/are capable of.

I think Crytek has a very important voice in the industry and am quite confident that their requests aren't falling on deaf ears.

It doesn't really matter. They make a powerful engine that pushes things to the limit, and they are well respected in the game developer's community. Any company would be silly to ignore what they say.

In the end though, they will not put more in than they believe would be necessary to carry it through the generation. A lot of people say RAM is cheap so it's no big deal, but those few dollars for extra, often unnecessary parts, adds up when you figure it over 60-70 million units sold. Just because Crytek says they want it doesn't mean they will get it, unless they can offer a strong reason on why it is needed for the long term survival of the console. Epic made a good case on increasing Xbox's RAM, so MS rightfully increased the memory.

Scientists say: PCs can reach 32GB of RAM... Haha just kidding it is completely different, because consoles only or...mainly use their RAM for the games, while PCs need that amount of RAM for other stuff. I want to know how will this be.

Well, They say next-gen Nexbox & Orbis will both be running x86-64 bit chip-sets. And the last time I checked, a 64bit chip-set supports up to 16GB RAM so even if by FATE's WILLING, both consoles get 8GB of RAM, The consoles chip-set STILL wouldn't be fully utilized to it fullest memory capability.

I don't see this happening. I don't see the next Xbox or PS4 having much more power than the WiiU.

As long as the console run games at 1080p at 60fps that will do me.

I also think Both Sony and MS will look for the £300 mark when there consoles come out and I also see the next Xbox having an improved Kinect system and maybe a controller like the wiiU with integrated Smart Glass.

I also see the PS3 having a updated eye toy and improved Move controller. But all this will be bundled with the console from day one so developers will take advantage of the hardware rather than making it an add on to a game.

"The WiiU is more powerful than the 360 and PS3 but people think its not because the processor is not clocked as fast"

People think its not because.....its not. It is in the ballpark, but not exactly blowing their socks off and never will. Not least of all because it seems no matter what it is running, there is a hard ceiling of 35 watts TDP and thus not a lot of headroom to exploit.

Wii U is stronger than than the 360 and PS3@vulcanproject Why do everybody see themselves as engineers nowaday?!...

I don't claim to know everything about specs but I can tell you that the wii u has a diffenrent architecture which doesn't require a fast CPU..and maybe it doesn't need much power either...you don' know...nobody does...so don't talk about things nobody can possibly know...and don't come with these tech sites.. most of them are only looking for numbers

Well than you are on of the few people out there who can talk legit ;)

But like you said: Once a game comes along which pushes the wii u like no game did befor..than I think many will see the true power of that system..

You know..I have faith in Nintendo...it was like the time when the original wii was released...everybody was throwing with numbers But Nintendo delivere...graphically insane titles like galaxy...or zelda..or even Metroid... I was impressed what Big N could do with a weak system like the wii was...

The same will happen with the Wii u...people aren't expecting a graphical leap at all... But I'm very optimistic about this...

Okay...so the guy with the reply about the Wii U not being more powerful because the power supply is only 35 watts where as the 360 has a 60 + watt has to be kidding. I too am an engineer and if you believe this, you're out of your league.

By your logic, my 386 computer with a 300 watt power supply must be 28.5 times more powerful than my iPad 2 (10.5 watts). How much power (watts) the system takes has zero to do with the processing capability of the unit. The CPU/GPU in the Wii U are of a much newer technology than the PS360 and are far more energy efficient.

amsterdamsters well said. This is the point i have been trying to get across. The old xbox had a different power supply to the new one so is that more powerful than the new xbox?

This is new technology so will use less and also needs less cooling so less chance of over heating.

At the end of the day no one knows what ms or sony are going to do next on here so we will have to wait for the to show us but i do believe there wont be much difference between the wiiu and the next 2 consoles in terms of power.

Nobody in this thread of discussion said Wii U isn't more powerful because it doesn't draw as much power as Xbox 360.

For an engineer amsterdamsters you sure don't read very well!

What I said was that Wii U is obviously not significantly faster than 360/PS3. Otherwise everything would run better right out the box if that were the case, all the ports would run better easily. Like they do for example on a PC that is significantly faster. This leaves Wii U somewhere really in the ballpark of 360/PS3 maybe a small bit faster, but a bit, at absolute best. Give or take a bit here or there, it isn't massively faster. It is obvious it isn't. Not only that, it never will be.

Why? My point was that Nintendo look like they have a machine with a restricted TDP. No doubt to keep the amount of heat dissipated under tight control in the smaller volume of the unit. Probably even has quite advanced hardware throttling and power management software.

There is so little variance between games it is unusual, because the amount of power drawn on other systems can vary quite a lot game to game, depending on how hard the machine is pushed. http://www.eurogamer.net/ar... It is uncapped essentially, only limited by how many processor cycles the developer can utilise and the chipset's maximum draw itself.

Wii U is not designed this way and it'll be proven in time that there is not a huge amount of performance in there to be unlocked with such a severe TDP restriction.

Nintendo have managed to get really great performance per watt (which has been seen previously in this thread) which is to be expected.

Can't say I am too amazed about that though nor does it really give Nintendo any 'green' credentials considering they constantly get slammed by eco groups for their extremely eco unfriendly way of business....

So the Zelda tech demo at E3 didn't provide you with the wow factor, considering it was running off the actual Wii-U hardware??? Or how about the flying bird demo??? It amazes me how people tend to forget that those were showing off the power of the system yet people want these things day one at launch. Give them time to make the games !!

@stragomccloud I was about to say the same thing. People are just so fickle when it come to technology.

I remember getting my PS1 and people were going on about how it did not matter if the N64 was more powerful as it was about the games and the same was said about the PS2. Now the PS3 is out all they go on about is how much more power the PS3 has over the other two.

It really dose not matter how powerful something is its how it works for you.

Get rid of the pricey controller from the package and you will have a lot of money left over to spend on better hardware. This is why i believe the PS4 and the 720 (if priced at 400€) will be a lot more powerful than the Wii U.

IMO

@NightmareLuffy

"Though BigN will never play the hardware game"

They did in the past with the Gamecube and N64 but it turned out horrible for them especially the N64.

People can dream I guess. In mass production, every little bit really adds up. A game system with 8 gigs of ram would really drive the costs up. It's granted that Sony and MS are going to take a loss on the sale of each unit, so they are going to try to keep that loss as low as possible. More than likely, both companies originally planned to release the next systems with 1 gig, but with The Wii U coming out with 2 gigs, they'll have to at least match that if they don't want a back lash. If we're very lucky, they might go up to 3 gigs in an attempt to one up Nintendo, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Attacking someone because their opininion doesn't tickle your ears is so immature that it's almost funny. Anyone has all the rights they want to disagree with me, but there's no need to get hostile about it. Personally I'd be happy myself if I'm wrong, but anyone who is implying that I don't know what I'm talking about have obviously never bothered to study or compare the console releases of the past. Go do that and I'll be happy to debate the the subject with you, but only in a civil mannor.

Enough of the mess. More RAM would be the most cost efficient way for developers to make better looking games. Having a more powerful GPU is always the the easiest way, but the cost of better GPU's will increase the cost of the console DRAMATICALLY. RAM is the cheaper option, and while it may not push more polygons it will allow more resources to be used (more stuff on screen), better textures (full HD environments), and less constraints for developers to work with.

I posted prices about RAM yesterday, but obviously it's been 1 or 2 years since I've bought some as the prices are even lower.

2GB $10 4GB $18 8GB $35 16GB $65 32GB $130

You're right every little bit adds up when your mass producing items, which is often why there are cuts made to keep cost as low as possible, for profit. However, RAM is the LAST area that should be cut when making these new consoles.

The PS4 and Nextbox won't be able to compete with GTX 670's+ or HD 7950's+. So they need to have a great deal of RAM if they want to keep their consoles powerful enough, and RAM is the key to that. 8GB for $35 is a cost they can afford.

Thanks for the civil response. You make some good points. I was wondering if you took memory speed into account with those prices? I having trouble finding any multi channel DDR3 memory at that price myself (for fast fps, memory speed just as if not more important than quantity, so it needs to be at least DDR3) Still, if you take even those numbers at mass production, it can add a lot to the cost. At those prices, if a company was, say producing a million units, changing from 2 gb to 8 gb would add $25 mil to production costs. Past experiences have shown time and time again that most people will only pay up to a certain price point for consoles and companies do have to at some point make a profit. I still highly doubt we'll see an 8 or higher system this coming gen., but even in the 2-4gb range, we're going to see some pretty cool stuff next gen.

Same here. The game with the highest RAM requirement I've played to date is Far Cry 3. It recoommend 8GB for best performance.

I have 8 GB but 44% of that is always in use by the programs. I run Farcry 3 at max setting and the fps stays of 100.

Putting 8 GB in a console would make the consoles more powerful (gaming wise) than modern PCs. Considering that consoles don't use normal RAM, that will make them far more expensive as well. 8 GB of proprietary high quality RAM like what they've been using would cost over $200 on its own.

Totally, I only have 4gb, and the system uses almost half. The closest to 2 I'e ever gotten was when one of my friends was playing Command and Conquer 3, and he just wanted to see how many units he could make if he spent half an hour doing just that. Needless to say I was shocked by how many units were on the screen, and it marks the first time my PC has ever "chugged" as it were.

There is a reason for his request... Your right heavy PC games top out between 2-3Gb.... however developers also want fast load times.... since PC makers have been stingy going to Blu-ray format and developers always want more space but also want speed he wants the extra Memory for streaming the game to memory with some left-over. Example:

A blu-ray disc has the capacity of 50GB..... A developer can stream 25GB of game to memory and still have roughly 6 GB of memory for processing the game for the CPU that leaves roughly 1 GB of memory left for the consoles operating system which = 32 GB of system memory................

Memory is much faster than disc and even SSDs and we know not every game is going to top out at 50GB thus streaming a majority of the game..... so essentially the extra memory would eliminate loading times thus lag

In order to get the ram useage to 25gb it would require displaying content equivalent to half a 50gb games entire world on screen at the same time. 1-2gb for the os is reasonable if your multitasking. 6gb would be enough for the game data and processing overhead. even if you were to overview a map the size of skyrim without repeating textures you would have to cross the entire map in less than a single second to force loading assuming that the rams speed isnt the bottleneck. essentially the speed of the highest quality ram would be the bottleneck before an amount over 8gb is.

Ok they can do and have done 1080p on the ps3 its just that because of the low ram they have to sacrifice the resolution for other features. And why will we not expect better? I will not lower my standard like most of you do.. I want new tech and ever generation jump has bring that. I don't see why this new gen will be different. Yes maybe few games may use 2k or upscale. To 2k may be for few games but I want it to be capable of it, it needs to be.

Have you seen the teach demos for next gen? They all look far better then any current game even on a hi end pc.

I just hope for a minimum of 16gb ram or even better 32gb ram will actually make it future prove and give devs a piece of mind for more textures, ai, objects at the same time anf etc.. a more polished game.

I'm with you on this one. 3gb seems to be the perfect point. Even on my pc, when gaming I don't use more than 2gb of ram. Usually around 2gb of video ram are used with high resolution textures and 8xMSaa. I don't see the consoles needing more than that. 4 would be pushing it. 8 would just be wasted.

Yea , it's more reasonable to me from price and use view , what the hell they will do with more then 4 gb ram ?. it's a gaming system not multi task hardware , it's about games so most of the ram should go to games ...

since sony admit that they made a mistake for making a high prie console they will try the lowest they could and if they are smart they will choose to be in middle , not high price nor low , it's what we console players need ..

i don't know about microsoft , but i heard about the directX thing and i hope it's true ...

what i want is 600$ , because i want a strong cpu and gpu too , others want it to be 300-400$ which is stupid in my opinion because that will not be evloving in gaming and it's useless to upgrade , if i were them i will make it 500$ but as a gamer i want it to be the strongest and i don't care about the price since i want great games , the people who's worried about price should just wait for price cut , that way we all win ...

I think the majority of people want to speend 300-400 max on a console. It's an odd statement you made, admitting Sony made a mistake with a high priced console, and then saying you yourself want a high priced console...? I think 399 is the high end of the model. They're aiming for the masses, not the high end user. If people want to drop 600 bucks, they'll probably go for a pc.

Honestly even 4GB would be good. People are forgetting that consoles are dedicated gaming machines. There is no need for an abundance of Ram because consoles don't have to run hundreds of background tasks that hog the memory.

RAM is a moot point without the bandwidthIt really comes down to the GPU and bandwidth to utilize the RAM, if it's not there then the GPU stalls and no amount of RAM helps. I think it will be 4 to 8G in RAM.

lol i've had 16gigs of ram in my pc for almost a year now, pc components basically double in power and become half as expensive like every two years. 8gigs is around 35 bucks now? these days if you had a computer with ps3 specs you'd toss it in the recycle bin...

Given the direction consoles are going ... 8GB of RAM seems like it will work for this cycle. Its clearly more than enough for current games. Don't forget that both consoles will be wanting to do more multitasking processes. Think App store.. you can have a game loaded up, twitter loaded up and possible DVR'ing a TV show in the back ground. The OS for consoles this next generation will command much more RAM, and I am sure they will build in buffers for "future" updates / changes.

i agree with you 100% and also think of the life cycle for the next gen, sony will do a 10years thing like they always do and where do you think RAM would be at the end of that cycle. so i think they will be future proofing their machine

There is barely any 64 bit games so using more then 4gb would be used elsewhere on the console. For extras like cross game chat and having applications running in the background. I think any more then 8gb is definitely overkill.